Ultimately our lives are only partially ours. The parts of our lives that change most are those that intrude with mythic vividness into the lives of those we love… As these stories overlap they change, but we have no voice in how or why.
One by one our stories are dragged away from us, pulled into the ditches of shared human memory. They are saved, but they are changed. One day my father will be gone except the parts of him I remember and the stories he has told me… How much of him have I not properly understood? What have I not asked? And looking at him I want him never to go. I want him always to be here. There is too much left for us to talk about.
— Tom Bissell, “War Wounds,” Harper’s, December 2004
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